F 483 
.M13 



1787. 1887. 

CENTENNIAL HYMN 



—OF- 



"JTie Northwest 

"Territory 



With jpJotes, 

By Mrs. N. N. McCULLOUGH. 



Price, 10 Cents. To Schools and Institutes, $1.00 per dozen. 



SPRINGFIELD, ILL.: 
SpringrtPkl Printing Co., Printers and Bookbinder*. 

—1887. 



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H&Mk&i 






IQfri 



1787. 1887. 



CENTENNIAL HYMN 



-OF- 



'"The Northwest 

territory. 



With Notes, 



By Mrs. N. N. McCULLOUGH. jtf$$$R$ 

» ft Jul 8-181- 
&►„ /r* V 6 

" No single decade in the history of the United States is so full of 
important events as that of which the present is the centennial— the 
decade from 1780 to 1790. And nearly all those events were directly 
■connected with the Northwest Territory and its settlement." 

Israel Ward Andrews, LL. D., 

Marietta, Ohio. 



Price, 10 Cents. To Schools and Institutes, Si. 00 per dozen. 



SPRINGFIELD, ILL.: 
Springfield Printing Co., Printers and Bookbinders. 

—188V.— 






Copyrighted by N. N. McCullough, 1S87- 



Address 

N. N. McCULLOUGH, 

Springfield, III. 



^ 



n 



Tune — John Brown. 
I. 

While the new centennials dawn upon our country far 

and wide 
How proper the occasion, how fitting is the pride, 
To celebrate the passage of the act that like a guide 
Sent the Nation marching on! 

Chorus. 
Glory, glory hallelujah! glory, glory hallelujah! 
Glory, glory hallelujah, keep the Nation marching on! 

There will occur a succession of centennial celebrations of 
national importance, during the next few years. For, beginning 
with 1787 came the formation and adoption of the constitution, 
the organization of the present form of the U. S. government, 
election and inauguration of the first President, first settlement in 
the Northwest Territory, down to 1900, when we shall have the 
iooth anniversary of the location of the capital of the United States, 
and 1903, the centennial of our first great purchase — Louisiana. 

The Continental Congress in session in New York City, 
July 13, 1787, passed an act entitled "An ordinance for the gov- 
ernment of the territory of the United States northwest of the 
river Ohio." It was the result of the application by a number of 
officers of the revolutionary army who proposed to take land in 
lieu of large arrearages of pay, and to make settlements and found 
new homes across the mountains. It originated in Massachusetts, 
where the officers formed an organization known as the Ohio Com- 



pany, and represented funds enough to pay four millions of the 
public debt, and actual large and immediate settlement by the most 
robust and industrious people in America, with undoubted attach- 
ment for and loyalty to the government, -provided favorable con- 
ditions could be secured. 

These included a form of government that would attract im- 
migrants for its liberality. The most marked points were: ist, 
the exclusion of slavery from the territory forever; 2d, provision 
for schools and religion; 3d, prohibition of the adoption of any 
constitution or the enactment of any law that should nullify pre- 
existing contracts. 

This act led the way and formed the model for the various 
laws concerning the government of all territories of the United 
States, such as the establishment of two grades of territorial gov- 
ernment; the first made up of a Governor, Secretary and three 
judges, the second having in addition a legislature, and a delegate 
to congress with the right of debate but no vote. It was a guide, 
too, for state as well as national legislation in a matter of vast im- 
portance to land owners, for the transfer of land and the rules of 
inheritance or the descent of property as established by the ordin- 
ance are in force in the original and legislative as well as the pub- 
lic land states. In fact, all of the ordinance has been, and many 
of its provisions are to-day, the law throughout the whole extent 
of the nation. 

II. 

A hundred years have passed since that legislative 

thought; 
How wonderful the changes its beneficence has wrought, 
What strength, support and comfort, what honor it has 

brought 

To the Nation marching on! 

Chorus. 



As in the language of this great American Charter, "the fun- 
damental principles of civil and religious liberty" were "the basis 
of all laws, constitutions and governments which forever here- 
after shall be formed in the said territory," there was everything 
to invite intelligent and patriotic people who would strengthen 
the national idea. 

The provisions of the ordinance rapidly converted a vast 
wilderness, which was practically without government, into five 
of the most prosperous states in the union. 

III. 

The ordinance began in a territory vast; 
Ere the red man had departed the emigrants came fast; 
States began to be admitted ere many years had passed, 
And the States are marchine; on! 
Chorus. 

The Northwest Territory was bounded by the Great Lakes 
and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers — the principal land bounda- 
ries being: the entrance from the east between Lake Erie and the 
Ohio River, and the exit between Lake of the Woods and Lake 
Itasca. See accompanying map. The territory was well nigh 
as large as the thirteen original states, the area of the latter being 
318,752 sq. miles, and of the former 265,562 sq. miles. 

When congress in 1787 sold a portion of the Northwest Terri- 
tory to the Ohio Company for settlement, the Indian occupancy 
title had been extinguished in the whole domain to but little more 
than half of what is now the State of Ohio, as shown by the treaty 
of Ft. Mcintosh, Jan. 21, 1785. It has been said that the love of 
war is the dearest inheritance an Indian receives from his parents, 
and the thirst for revenge that of the Kentuckian; so there was 
not needed the encouragement of the British, who held the posts 
on the north, to make Ohio the battle ground of others than the 
pioneers. The result of the proximity of the Indians may be in- 
ferred from the published offer of one hundred and thirty-stx dol- 
lars for every Indian scalp taken within prescribed limits. 



But following the sale to the Ohio Company was one to John 
Cleves Symmes, and immigration to the west became the order of 
the day. 

Three states only were added to the original thirteen prior to 
Ohio, the first in the territory. 

The admission of Ohio took effect Feb. 19, 1S03, though the 
year 1802 is usually given as the date. The facts are: April 30, 
1802, congress passed and the President approved the enabling 
act, so called because its purpose is to enable the people of a given 
territory to form a constitution and a state government. Among 
other things it provides for delegates to and place of holding a 
convention to frame a constitution subject to the approval of con- 
gress. In accordance with the enabling act, a convention met and 
adjourned, having framed a constitution for the State of Ohio. 
This was presented for the approval of congress Jan. 7, 1803. 
Now, obviously, the state could not be admitted before the con- 
stitution was presented to congress, especially a state from this 
Northwest Territory, for the ordinance expressly provides, con- 
cerning the admission of states, that the "constitution and govern- 
ment so to be formed shall be republican and in conformity to 
the principles contained in these articles." 

Whether the constitution filled the conditions congress would 
have to be the judge; so, then, Ohio was not admitted prior to 
Jan. 7, 1S03, when the constitution was laid before congress. 

Feb. 19, 1S03, there was approved by President Jefferson, an 
act recognizing the State of Ohio, the first mention in U. S. rec- 
ords of that political division. It bears title "An Act to provide 
for the clue execution of the laws of the United States within the 
State of Ohio," but nowhere in it does it purport to admit the 
state. 

From the territory the admission of states after Ohio in 1S03 
was, Indiana 1816, Illinois 1S1S, Michigan 1S37, Wisconsin 184S, 
Minnesota 1858. The government of the territory was begun in 
1787, just after the Revolution, our first great war; and the last 
portion of the territory became a part of the Union on the admis- 
sion of Minnesota, just prior to the civil war. 



— 9— 
IV. 

It avowed the Nation's purpose to elevate the race, 
It gave to education its proper rank and place, 
It became a daily blessing; it has proved a means of 
grace 



Chorus. 



To the Nation marching on! 



There can be no more elevating influences than must flow 
from article 3: ''Religion, morality and knowledge being neces- 
sary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools 
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." 

Being founded upon the principles of freedom, justice and the 
inherent rights of humanity; and being a compact unalterable un- 
less by common consent, it secured every daily blessing that may 
come from civil and religious liberty — the rights of conscience and 
security in religious worship, proportionate representation, trial by 
jury, writ of habeas corpus^ common law in judicial proceedings, 
and the rights of property. 

Article 6 of the ordinance, the prohibition of slavery, which 
had been rejected in previous plans for the government of western 
territory, has been a means of grace, as it proved that prosperity 
does not depend upon the "peculiar institution," and raised an ef- 
fective barrier to the ambition of those political leaders who would 
have nationalized slavery. 

V. 

'Tis here we find the Nation's heart; its earliest, faintest 

beat 
In gratitude and praise to Him the Christmas morn 

would greet, 
And all its later pulses but the earlier strokes repeat 

As the Nation marches on! 

Chorus. 



— IO — 

In 1S37 Judge Hall, referring to the territory as the western 
plain, called it "the center of our empire, the citadel of its strength, 
the magazine of its resources, the heart whose healthful opera- 
tion must throw out nourishment and vigor to the whole conti- 
nent." 

Christmas Day, 17S8, by proclamation of Governor St. Clair, 
was set apart as a day of thanksgiving — the first in the territory. 

If the organic law may be considered the life of the state, 
then the acknowledgment of divine blessing and desire for its con- 
tinuance as voiced in the preambles of the state constitutions are 
but later pulses of the earlier strokes represented by congressional 
enactment and state papers, for the ordinance honors religion, and 
Gov. St. Clair's official documents are full of Christian thoughts. 

VI. 

The territorial wilderness has many stately domes. 
? Twas here that Brother Jonathan had land to give for 

homes, 
Where he set aside the portion known to legislative 

tomes, 

And the schools are marching on! 

Chorus. 

There are now in what was the territory a capitol for each 
state, universities, colleges, charitable institutions, churches, acade- 
mies of art, literature, music and science, United States buildings, 
etc., etc. 

This territory, excluding some reservations on the part of the 
states making cession, was the first real property of the nation. 
It was called the public domain — government land — congress 
land and public land — belonging to, surveyed and disposed 
of, by the nation — or Brother Jonathan. The first pre-emp- 
tion act, passed 1S01, contained the germ of actual settlement 
under which thousands of homes have been made. The first 



homestead act, passed i860, was promptly vetoed by James Bu- 
chanan; the next congress, however, passed another, which Abra- 
ham Lincoln — of the Northwest Territory — approved May 20, 
1S62. 

Section 16 of every township, one square mile out of every 
tract six miles square, one thirty-sixth part of all the land, was set 
aside by the national government for the support of schools; 
called the school section. Proceeds of which to-day form no 
small part of the permanent school fund of each of the states of the 
Northwest Territory. The principal can not be used; the interest 
on it, to which is added the school tax, gives the money for con- 
ducting the public schools. 

As this school land was a trust for a specific purpose named 
and to be applied to none other, there could be nothing done with 
it without concurrent legislation by the states interested and con- 
gress. When the school section has been found to be missing or 
swamp land, congress has been asked to make good the deficiency. 
Those townships on navigable waters, such as the Lakes or the 
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and in some other cases as well, may 
not contain the school section. Then, too, there have been at- 
tempts to divert the fund; so for many reasons there has been 
much legislation concerning the school land, the text of which is 
to be found only in the journals of congress and of the various 
states all the way along the years, beginning with 1785. 

Senator S. A. Douglas — from a Northwest Territory state — in 
1848, on the organization of the territory of Oregon, advocated 
the additional grant for schools of the 36th section. Minnesota is 
the only one of the Northwest Territory States to reap the bene- 
fit of this enactment. This state, however, being only in part 
made up from the territory, may be considered the geographical 
tie between the territory and the rest of the United States. 



12 — 

VII. 

Call the names of men and women our country honors 

best, 
'Twill be found a goodly number answer from the old 

Northwest. 
What they did, and how they did it, makes plainly 

manifest 

Why the Nation marches on! 

Chorus. 

Generals Grant, Custer and Sherman, Alice and Phebe Cary, 
Schoolcraft, "the only man in America who had seen the Mis- 
sissippi from its source to its mouth," and Captain Eads, all were 
born or have lived in what was the Northwest Territory. Mrs. 
Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in Ohio. It is a list that may 
be almost indefinitely extended. 

VIII. 

It gave how many thousands when freedom's fight be- 
gan, 

It gave the world a Lincoln, the first American; 

It furnished land for all who wished, how excellent the 
plan, 

For a Nation marching on! 

Chorus. 

About one-third of the entire Union army in the civil war, 
1861-5, was furnished by the states of the Northwest Territory, 
among which is reckoned Minnesota. 97 1 ,3-(6 being the total 
number of soldiers from the six states. 



Proportionate to her population, Michigan ranks first in the 
number of her soldiers who rest in the national cemetery at Gettys- 
burg. 

In "The Commemoration Ode" Lowell makes this allusion 
to the martyr president: 

"Great captains with their guns and drums 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

Clarence King, in the Century Magazine for October, 1SS6, says 
that Lincoln was the first American to reach the lonely heights of 
immortal fame; that out of the great migration westward of 
home-makers, the true hardy American people have sprung, and 
out of it Lincoln came. He looms up from the very heart of 
American life, a true and characteristic son of the men of the 
west. "For Lincoln, there is a feeling of mystery and distance 
which is not to be explained by his short career and early mar- 
tyrdom; rather it has its origin in the consciousness that he was 
nearest to the hand of Divine Providence, and that the lips which 
uttered the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Consecra- 
tion spoke with the deep vibration of a nature bowed and over- 
come by the great moral power which guides the destiny of the 
nation." 

As the Northwest Territory was the first real property of the 
nation, it was here that vital changes were made in land tenures. 
The highest title to land in the United States is the government 
grant or patent, and carries with it and confers an unlimited 
power of alienation. Hence the land owner is peculiarly a part 
of the nation, and as every citizen may hold land, the plan is no 
small item in the growth of the nation. 



—i 4 — 
IX. 

The National Convention meets upon historic ground; 
We hear the mission service in the solitude profound, 
And next we hear Ft. Dearborn with hideous yells re- 
sound, 

But the Nation marches on! 

Chorus. 

The National Educational Association, which meets in Chi- 
cago July 12, 1887, has in the programme exercises commemora- 
tive of the iooth anniversary of the passage of the ordinance — 
very appropriately, when it is remembered what that act did for 
education. 

On his way to establish a mission at the principal town of the 
Illinois Indians — near the present town of Utica, 111., — the Kas- 
kaskia afterwards transferred south, Marquette spent the winter 
of 1674-5 where Chicago now is. He was ill and unable to travel 
further, and though feeble, Parkman says, "he began the spiritual 
exercises of St. Ignatius and confessed his companions twice a 
week." For a long time this was all that the "Queen of the 
North and the West" knew of civilization. In 1S04 the United 
States government built a fort on the south side of the Chicago 
river, just east of where Rush St. bridge was afterward built, 
and named it in honor of the Secretary of War, Gen. Dearborn. 
When Gen. Hull surrendered Detroit in 1812, he ordered the 
evacuation of Ft. Dearborn. The garrison, on the way to Ft. 
Wayne, Ind., had proceeded but a short distance when they were 
attacked by Indians and nearly all murdered, Aug. 15, 1S12. 

Mr. John Kinzie lived across the river from the fort and had 
peculiar opportunities for knowing about the massacre. He ac- 
companied the garrison when it marched out, hoping by his in- 
fluence to avert the impending calamity, and was sent a prisoner 
with the survivors into Canada. 



— '5— 

X. 

The early mission stations have crumbled into dust, 
The scalping knives and hatchets are eaten up with 

rust, 
The gifts those ages bring us let us treasure as a trust 
For the children marching on! 

Chorus. 

The Jesuits from Canada established mission stations at the 
trading posts, Sault Ste. Mary, St. Ignatius or Mackinaw, Detroit,. 
Vincennes and Kaskaskia being among the earliest. Possession 
of the country by the English after the French and Indian war 
left the priests without the support of the government, and con- 
sequently the mission stations fell into decay. Those more remote 
from civilization endured longest, as Kaskaskia, 111., where hung 
the first church bell that ever rang west of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains. It was cast at Rochelle, France, in 1741, to be given to the 
infant church in America. 

The commonest incidents of every day life in that early time 
were invested with all the attractions which fortitude, courage, 
peril and suffering can possibly confer. 

The people who here endured and labored that the nation 
might grow have left us examples of untold value. Edwin D. 
Mead, in Education for December, 18S6, says "a good citizen 
must be a patriot, and a good patriot must be an intelligent one — 
one who knows what the country's history and institutions mean.'' 

XI. 

The tales of lonely cabins are of hardships and of woe,. 
How the mothers sighed in sadness to see the winter 

go; 

They had learned that with the bluebird came the 
cruel Indian foe, 

But the settler marches on! 
Chorus. 



— 16— 

J. H. Kennedy, in the Magazine of American History for De- 
cember, 18S6, says of Ohio: 

"The forests yet standing could whisper the names of brave 
men in homespun and buckskin who, beneath their branches, gave 
up life as grandly as did their fathers on the fields of the Revolu- 
tion, and many dark legends are yet told by men and women who 
received them from the lips of those who had part therein, or on 
whom a portion of their shadow fell. And as these brave fathers 
and patient mothers suffered together and held each other close 
in the bond of human sympathy, so shall they together share the 
love and veneration in which their memory is held." And Prof. S. 
P. Hildreth, in his Pioneer History, says: " The spring was not 
greeted with the hilarity and welcome so common in all parts of 
the world. The mothers preferred the gloom and storms of win- 
ter and regretted its departure, viewing the budding of the trees 
and opening of the wild flowers with saddened feelings as har- 
bingers of evil — listening to the song of the bluebird and martin 
with cheerless hearts, as preludes to the war cry of the savage." 

XII. 

'Twas Clark and old Virginia, in Patrick Henry's day, 
Brought the flag across the prairies ere 'twas certain 

east to stay, 
They caught the British General who had gold for 

scalps to pay, 

And they sent him marching on! 

Chorus. 

Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, in 177S, authorized 
Gen. George Rogers Clark to capture Kaskaskia and other west- 
ern posts from the British. This was a perilous enterprise, and as 
Clark had no artillery or means of assaulting the posts, the idea 
has been called almost equal to Wayne's storming Stony Point 
or Ethan Allen's capturing Ticonderoga. 



-i 7 - 

Clark was successful, and as 1778 was some time before the 
surrender of Cornwallis, there was great uncertainty about the 
establishment of the nation on any enduring basis. 

The British employed the Indians to harass the colonists, and 
they did very effective work on the frontiers. Gen. Henry Hamil- 
ton, in command at Detroit, was especially active, and as he paid 
gold for scalps and nothing for prisoners, the Indians drove their 
prisoners in sight of Detroit and then carried the scalps in. Ham- 
ilton went down to Vincennes, where he was captured by Clark, 
who called him the "Hair Buyer" and sent him to Virginia in 
irons. When in prison in Virginia, after the opinion of Washing- 
ton and Jefferson that while he deserved it, according to the terms 
of his surrender he could not be kept ironed, Hamilton was 
offered a parole to sign — that he would be inoffensive in word and 
deed. He refused, insisting that he had a right to abuse the rebels 
verbally as much as he pleased. He did sign, however. 

XIII. 

Detroit upon the border counts her Indian sieges three, 
Ft. Chartres that the mighty river carried to the sea — 
We'll keep them green as is the grass above Recovery, 
While the Nation marches on! 
Chorus. 

The sieges of Detroit were in 1712, 1746 and 1763 — all un- 
successful; the last one, conducted by Pontiac and continuing 
more than fifteen months. Of the later vicissitudes of Michigan, 
comparing it to a plant, Schoolcraft has said: "Thrice plucked 
up was it — by the total destruction of Detroit (which was in fact the 
territory) by fire in 1805; by the terrible British and Indian war 
of 1812; and by the Indian war of Black Hawk in 1832. It has 
suffered in blood and toil more than any or all the other north- 
western territories together. It has been the entering point for 
all hostilities from Canada, and to symbolize its position, it has 
been the anvil on which all the grand weapons of our Indian 



— 18— 

scath have been hammered. Its old French and American fami- 
lies have been threshed by the flail of war like grain on the floor." 
The name of the fort is pronounced shartr. It was built about 
twenty miles north of Kaskaskia by the French, in 1719-20. 
Made of wood and named in compliment to the Due de Chartres, 
cousin of King Louis XV. In 1756 it was rebuilt of stone and 
plastered on the outside. It was the headquarters for military 
operations, the center of fashionable life and capital of the country. 
It was built to protect the French from Spanish cavalry that was 
expected to come across the "Great Desert" from Mexico, for 
France and Spain were at war. And later, soldiers marched from 
this place to fight the English in Pennsylvania and Canada, in the 
war which began in the mountain passes of the Alleghanies and 
ended on the Plains of Abraham. The gates of this post, which 
was at one time considered the greatest fortification in America 
and might have withstood long continued assaults, were opened 
peacefully by the stroke of a pen in the old world one day in 1763. 
It stood one mile from the Mississippi, but inundations and 
changes of channel so undermined the structure that the fort was 
abandoned in 1772, the west wall and two bastions having fallen 
into the river. 

A detachment of Gen. Wayne's army in 1793 built a fort on 
the site of St. Clair's battle ground with the Indians in 1791. It 
stood near the line between Mercer and Darke Counties, Ohio, and 
on naming the fort the recovered artillery left in St. Clair's retreat 
was fired three times. 

XIV. 

There are other scenes of sadness and other names to 

bless, 

And other deeds to honor, as the fertile wilderness 

Lay a vast and unknown storehouse for the people to 

possess, 

And the Nation marches on! 

Chorus. 



—i 9 — 

Such scenes of sadness as " the River Raisin" will be sug- 
gested, and research but increases the list of those who, each in 
his peculiar way or according to his opportunities, have been bless- 
ings. 

The children should be taught that every conscientious duty 
done is as honorable as the deeds that are recorded as heroic, for 
— "Only the actions of the just 6mell sweet and blossom in the 
dust." 

The Northwest Territory has proved a storehouse of useful 
metals — lead, iron and copper, the latter ore being of the richest 
quality, yielding 80 per cent of ingot copper,, and Lake Superior 
iron is acknowledged to be the best in the world, Its strength 
per square inch is 89,582 lbs.; the nearest approach is Russia iron, 
bearing 76,069 lbs. to the square inch. Common English and 
American iron 30,000 lbs. 

The first coal in America was discovered in the Northwest 
Territory — by Marquette, on the Illinois river, in 1670. 

A list would mention many other natural products, and the 
abundance of salt. 

XV. 

How sylvan was the country where Schoolcraft found 
his bride, 

And this the home of Garfield, 'twas here that Love- 
joy died. 

In deeds and men of greatness has the Territory vied 
With the Nation marching on! 
Chorus. 

Michigan, where Schoolcraft met and married the grand- 
daughter of an Indian king, was a forest country. This lady had 
been highly educated in England and rendered her husband most 
valuable assistance in prosecuting that course of research into the 
languages, traditions and antiquities of the Indian tribes, which, 
even from his earliest youth, it had been his ambition to pursue. 



— 20 — 

Garfield's home was at Mentor, Ohio; Lovejoy was killed at 
Alton, 111. — all within former Territorial limits. 

Lovejoy published a paper in St. Louis, Mo., in which he ex- 
pressed anti-slavery sentiments. Because of hostile demonstrations 
he removed to Alton, where he was shot by a mob collected to 
destroy his printing press, Nov. 7, 1S37. 

XVI. 

The long and lonely journey of the fair Acadian maid, 
The home of Hiawatha, which our poet has portrayed, 
Like the Eagle Quill of Whittier, have tender pictures 

made 

For the Nation marching on! 
Chorus. 

Longfellow is especially the school poet. A large portion of 
the scenes of Evangeline and Hiawatha are in the Northwest 
Territory. The incidents of the latter poem were obtained from 
Schoolcraft's works, as was Lowell's Chippewa Legend. Whit- 
tier wrote a poem "On Receiving an Eagle Quill from Lake 
Superior," which is a fine review of territorial events. 

XVII. 

The star of empire passes on, 'tis shining in the West, 
Its rays have made a golden chain to bind to all the 

rest 
The land across the river which was first a mighty test 



Chorus. 



To the Nation marching on! 



Bishop Berkeley's "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and 
Learning in America," has the line, 

"Westward the course of empire takes its way," and custom 
has made it "star of empire." Dawning upon the Atlantic coast, 



— 21 — 

it now beams upon the far West, where a succession of great 
states is, in time, to be added to the nation. 

The ownership of the Northwest Territory was a bone of con- 
tention during almost all of the time of the confederation, for it 
was claimed by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Vir- 
ginia, and their claims overlapped. 

As they were disinclined to yield to each other, cession to the 
nation was about the only way out of the difficulty. It was a 
matter that took time, but it was finally accomplished by the ces- 
sion on the part of each state, of all claims to western land to the 
United States. And national possession of this immense area was 
a larger element of strength in the formation of the new govern- 
ment than all other considerations put together. For when the 
constitution of the United States was made public for the appro- 
val of men, a great and independent source of revenue had passed 
into the hands of a single body of men who could, as Madison 
said, "raise troops to an indefinite number and appropriate money 
to their support for an indefinite period of time." 

In the Atlantic Monthly for November, 18S6, John Fiske 
says: " The acquisition of common territory led to results not at all 
contemplated in the theory of union upon which the articles of con- 
federation were based. It led to the exercise of national sover- 
eignty in the sense of eminent domain, as shown in the ordinances 
of 1784 and '87, and prepared men's minds for the federal conven- 
tion." 

And Congress had shown its ability to take care of the prop- 
erty of the nation as manifested in the ordinance of 17S7. In the 
Magazine of American History for August, 1886, Dr. Andrews 
points out that the direct authority of Congress over the 
territory pervades the ordinance, and quotes the statesman-jurist, 
Chase, concerning it: " Never, probably, in the history of the 
world, did a measure of legislation so accurately fulfill, and yet so 
mightily exceed, the anticipations of the legislators." 

Fiske says of the ordinance that the theory of peaceful seces- 
sion was condemned in advance as far as the government could go, 
and quotes Daniel Webster: "I doubt whether any single law of 



— 22 — 

any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more dis- 
tinct, marked and lasting character than the ordinance of 1787." 
That Congress possessed and exercised all this power and no 
blame had been whispered and no alarm sounded, even by men 
most zealous for state rights and most suspicious of Congress, was 
cited with telling effect against those who hesitated to accept the 
federal constitution because of the great powers which it conferred 
upon the general government. 

XVIII. 

Pioneers of early schoolrooms all have entered into 
rest. 

The learners and the learned, all have left us this be- 
quest: 

Love the Nation, teach its greatness, and to help to 
bless it best 

Keep the children marching on! 
Chorus. 

Glory, glory hallelujah! glor}', glory hallelujah! 
Glory, glory hallelujah, keep the children marching on! 

The public school system has been developed and greatly im- 
proved since the days of the pioneers — the territorial teachers. 
Much discussion has occurred from time to time as to the proper 
scope and province of the "people's colleges. All will agree that 
they ought to make good citizens. For this purpose no single 
study is so important as the study of American history. 

In Education for November, 1886, Francis Newton Thorpe 
says: " Every American who becomes a true citizen enters upon 
responsibilities which he should have opportunity to study before 
assuming them. This is the just claim for having our history 
studied in the public schools. The child should be able to see from 
consecutive maps how the nation has grown and spread itself over 



—23— 

this continent; he should be taught the social development of 
this people; how they have founded states, built highways, rail- 
roads, canals, steamship lines; how our commerce has grown and 
why it has grown; what we require to support ourselves and 
where and how we raise it; what is the nature of our manufac- 
tures and what the condition and relations between employer and 
employe. If the teacher would develop the life of the nation 
historically in the mind of the child, our history would live in and 
with the child, and his knowledge of it would be a conscious 
power working for his happiness." 

Of the way in which history is usually taught, he begins by 
saying that "an examination of the ordinary text book of American 
history shows that about one third of the book is devoted to pic- 
tures, about two thirds to American history before 1789, and the 
remainder to the history of the United States. 

"The teacher abbreviates the text book, which abbreviates the 
larger work. The child abbreviates the teacher. The results are, 
a meager amount of disconnected facts and a certain uncertainty 
in the mind of the pupil that leaves him conscious only of his ig- 
norance. It is in justice to the nation that the youth of our land 
become familiar with the story of popular government in this west- 
ern world." 

The books which have been consulted for the various facts, 
accounts, incidents and statistics, are: 

Peck's Annals of the West. 

Executive Documents of 3d. session of 46th Congress, vol. 25. 

Hall's Notes on the Western States. 

The St. Clair Papers. 

Charters and Constitutions of the States. 

Phisterer's Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States. 

Parkman's La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. 

Mrs. J. H. Kinzie's Wau-bun, or the Early Day in the Northwest. 
The edition of 1856 contains fine illustrations, drawn by Mrs. Kin- 
zie, of various points in the northwest. 

Hildreth's Pioneer History forms Vol. I. of the Transactions of the Ohio 
Historical Society. 

Abbott's History of Ohio. On page 189 is a letter of Benjamin Frank- 
lin, purporting to be from a British officer to the Governor of Can- 
ada, accompanying a present of eight packages of scalps. 

Tuttle's History of Michigan. 

Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio. 



—2 4 — 

History of Randolph County, Illinois. 

Ford's, Reynolds', Brown's, and Davidson and Stuve's Histories of 

Illinois. 
Hall's Memoirs of Wm. H. Harrison. 
Browne's Maryland. 

Schoolcraft's Thirty Years among the Indians. 
Tanner's Martyrdom of Lovejoy. 

Works of Longfellow. Whittier's Poems. Lowell's Poems, ed. of '65. 
Monette's Valley of the Mississippi. 
Beck's Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri. 
Colbert and Chamberlain's Great Conflagration. 
Washburne's Sketch of Gov. Coles. 
Studer's Columbus, Ohio. 
Strickland's Old Mackinaw. 
Smith's History of Wisconsin. 
Harris' Tour through the N. W. Territory in 1803. 
The Edwards Papers, cyclopaedias, current magazines and journals. 

Some of these books are old and can be seen only in libraries, 
but most of them and many others are obtainable, and every teacher 
who will read them will be repaid a thousand fold for the trouble 
by the pleasure he will derive from his fund of information, and 
he will have a greater and better influence and value, both in and 
out of the school room. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 571 666 4 § 






"The man who hath not music in himself 
And is.not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils." 

— Shakesjieare. 



